Replies

See: U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits (Clinton ClearVisionProgram CIA Developed Germ Bomb) [Free Republic], New York Times, September 4, 2001, by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William J. Broad (posted by t-shirt).

Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons that, some officials say, tests the limits of the global treaty banning such weapons.
The 1972 treaty forbids nations from developing or acquiring weapons that spread disease, but it allows work on vaccines and other protective measures. Government officials said the secret research, which mimicked the major steps a state or terrorist would take to create a biological arsenal, was aimed at better understanding the threat.
The projects, which have not been previously disclosed, were begun under President Clinton and have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.
Earlier this year, administration officials said, the Pentagon drew up plans to engineer genetically a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes anthrax, a deadly disease ideal for germ warfare.
The experiment has been devised to assess whether the vaccine now being given to millions of American soldiers is effective against such a superbug, which was first created by Russian scientists. A Bush administration official said the National Security Council is expected to give the final go-ahead later this month.
Two other projects completed during the Clinton administration focused on the mechanics of making germ weapons.
In a program code-named Clear Vision, the Central Intelligence Agency built and tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ bomb that agency officials feared was being sold on the international market. The C.I.A. device lacked a fuse and other parts that would make it a working bomb, intelligence officials said.
At about the same time, Pentagon experts assembled a germ factory in the Nevada desert from commercially available materials ...

See: Russian Germ Warfare Research Continues [Free Republic], AP, February 14, 1998, by the AP Washington staff (posted August 18, 1999 by TheSentry).

CT Lab develops resistant anthrax strain
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. scientists want a sample of a new form of anthrax developed in Russia that may be able to elude the vaccine shots American troops soon will get.
The organism --- the first known genetically engineered potential biological warfare threat --- is an altered form of anthrax [and] can cause severe illness and death in humans who inhale large doses.
"This is a Trojan horse," said Col. Arthur Friedlander, chief of the Bacteriology Division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases ["AMRIID"] in Frederick, Md. "This is coming in as anthrax, but it's got other bullets in it --- different bullets."
He said the Defense Department is working through diplomatic and other channels to get the Russians to share this new organism and other naturally occurring strains of anthrax with U.S. experts in the field.
Friedlander and other biological warfare experts are confident that the American vaccine, based on a protein called protective antigen, can protect troops against any anthrax strain that relies on this protein to facilitate damage to white blood cells.
They are more uneasy about the Russian organism, which contains two non-anthrax genes that change the organism and may alter the way it causes disease. If this is the case, it is conceivable that the current American vaccine might not be effective, Friedlander said. "We need to get hold of this strain to test it against our vaccine," Friedlander said. "We need to understand how this new organism causes disease and we need to test it in animals other than hamsters that the Russians used" ...
Development of a new strain through genetic engineering is something that biological warfare experts around the world have feared since the advent of such technology in the late 1970s and early 1980s. "Ever since the dawn of the age of genetic engineering, there's always been a speculation that somebody could always make designer bugs," said Col. Gerald Parker, commander of the institute at Fort Detrick ...
Parker said Army scientists had no knowledge that Iraq also had developed this new organism ...
Paul Jackson, a molecular biologist who has done research on the genetics of anthrax at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, says the Russian research paper gives details for making the new organism using standard methods of molecular biology. "The Russians have demonstrated that they can do it," Jackson says. "Clearly, any competent laboratory in the world could do this, too" ...

See: Washington Accuses Cuba of Germ-Warfare Research [Free Republic], New York Times, May 7, 2002, by Judith Miller (posted May 6th by JohnHuang2).

The Bush administration has accused Cuba of producing small quantities of germs that can be used in biological warfare and says Libya and Syria are also violating international treaties by making unconventional weapons.
In a speech [Monday, May 6th] at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, John R. Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control, publicly alluded to conclusions that American intelligence agencies have reached in recent months after protracted internal debate.
"The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort," Mr. Bolton said ... [Cuba has also] "provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states" ...
Mr. Bolton's office would not elaborate on the charges. But other administration officials say the United States now believes that Cuba has been experimenting with anthrax, as well as a small number of other deadly pathogens that they declined to identify ...
Ken Alibek, the most senior scientist who defected from the Soviet Union's biological weapons program, told a Congressional committee last October [2001] that he believed that Cuba was capable of making genetically modified germ weapons that might be able to defeat American vaccines and antibiotics ...
Cuban biotechnological research is far advanced in genetic engineering. That has enabled Cuba to make new vaccines for its comprehensive immunization program, which is widely admired by scientists and physicians. Cuba also makes drugs like recombinant streptokinase, the "clot buster" for heart attack victims. In 1995 Cuba sold $125 million worth of these products, primarily to other developing countries, especially to former Soviet states ...
Mr. Bolton said in his speech that last year, Mr. Castro visited Iran, Syria and Libya, all of which Washington has designated as sponsors of terrorism. He noted that at Tehran University, Mr. Castro had said that Iran and Cuba, together, could "bring America to its knees" ...

See: Scientist's anthrax claim was bogus [Free Republic], Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, October 4, 2001, by Gretchen Schuldt (posted December 19, 2001 by Clinton's a rapist).

A week after the terrorist attacks on America, a highly educated scientist told Milwaukee police that he was building an anthrax delivery system in his basement, according to documents filed in federal court.
In these times of heightened alert, the remark earned the man a visit from FBI agents armed with a search warrant, who took the man's computer, and keypads from a telephone and a microwave oven, according to court records. But no deadly anthrax.
As it turns out, police were responding to a neighbor dispute, and the man was intoxicated when he made the anthrax comments to police.
FBI spokeswoman Cathy Fahey said no further investigation is planned and the man, whose resume says he has a doctorate in nuclear and environmental chemistry, is not likely to be charged ...
The affidavit says the man told officers he had worked for subcontractors of the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy as a senior research scientist.
His resume, which he provided to the officers, "indicates that his specialty is in the areas of radio chemistry, military ordnance and munitions, and decontamination," the affidavit says.
The man's employment history was verified with a former employer, the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio. He was fired twice - in 1996 and 1999 - from his job there as a senior research scientist, according to the affidavit and the man's resume, which also was filed in court.
Battelle "had reason" to search the man's home after he was fired the second time, the affidavit says.
The searchers found chemicals that were not illegal to possess, but an informant told the FBI that the man "has the knowledge and experience to utilize the chemicals that were found in his basement to make a lethal chemical agent," the affidavit says.

From the Abilene Reporter-News, November 5, 2001, by Paul Recer, AP Science Writer [excerpts]:

Investigators looking for source of anthrax that killed New York woman
[Washington - AP] ... Health investigators were stymied in efforts to find the source of anthrax that killed a New York woman, but experts said they were relieved that no new cases linked to her unique exposure have surfaced ...
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday that the source of the spores that caused the death last week by inhalation anthrax of Kathy T. Nguyen in New York was unknown.
Nguyen died a short time after being admitted to a hospital. She was not able to be interviewed and investigators have not been able to link her infection to the postal service or to mail handling.
Early anthrax tests at her Bronx apartment and at the hospital where she worked were negative. CDC investigators are widening the effort to include other places where she might have contracted the spores.
"Every possible lead is being followed," said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, head of the CDC. He said the investigation has been difficult because Nguyen lived alone.
Fauci said that the lack of a known postal connection suggests that Nguyen may have gotten the disease in a different way. He said it is possible that hers is a "sentinel case in a new and evolving pattern."
If that were true, there should have been similar cases by now, Fauci said on CBS' "Face the Nation." Investigators are checking her contacts to find if there are other cases, but none have been found.
"That's the good news," he said. "The bad news is that we still have a mystery of how this happened ...
Since the anthrax crisis began last month, 10 Americans have developed inhaled anthrax, the most serious form of the disease; Nguyen was the fourth to die.

See: Secrets of "Dr. Germ" [Free Republic], New York Post, October 22, 2001, by Bill Hoffman (posted by kattracks).

A cunning woman scientist who heads Saddam Hussein's bio-terrorism team may be the mastermind behind the world's anthrax scare, a leading American germ warfare expert says.
Rihab Taha, 45, is so notorious that United Nations weapons inspectors have nicknamed her "Dr. Germ" for deadly experiments she conducted.
"There is no question in my mind these anthrax attacks in Florida, New York and Washington involve international terrorists," said Richard Spertzel, the expert who headed the U.N. team that exposed Taha.
"And Iraq is the prime suspect as the supplier" ...
The British-trained Taha gained a biology degree at the University of East Anglia after arriving in 1979 to study crop diseases.
But when she returned to Iraq, Taha led a team that made germs causing victims' eyes to bleed and produced a bacteria that gave babies a deadly diarrhea.
U.N. inspectors believe Taha, who has a 5-year- old daughter, tests her poisons on human guinea pigs.
In 1995, she admitted that a secret germ factory she set up near Baghdad had made thousands of gallons of anthrax and botulism - enough to kill millions.
Military officials in Washington recently identified Taha as "the leading official in charge of Iraq's biological weapons program."
She is also politically well-connected. Her husband is Iraqi oil minister Amir Rashid Ubaydi, who helps direct the country's relations with the U.N. weapons-inspection teams ...
Over the years, Iraq has produced great quantities of liquid anthrax for deployment in missile warheads, U.N. inspectors say, and Iraqi agents are known to meet periodically with bin Laden operatives.
Investigators have been looking with renewed interest at two reported meetings last summer between Mohamed Atta, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 hijackings, and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.